He ponders a moment.
“You’re darn pretty in those plaid slacks.”
Mokka
I walk away with my case and head towards a basement flat in Kjartansgata. The clock on the quadrilateral tower in Lækjartorg shows close to seven. On one of its sides is the picture of a smiling woman in a sleeveless pale-blue dress with a wide skirt, who is holding a box of Persil washing powder. In the square, two women in brown woollen coats sit on a wooden bench with iron armrests, while seagulls peck at some breadcrumbs nearby.
I walk up Bankastræti, which is lined with multi-coloured cars, American hot wheels with leather-upholstered seats. The guys are out prowling and blow their horns, with their elbows leaning out the windows, cigarettes dangling from their mouths and brilliantined hair, slowly accosting me, barely older than kids. There are even more bookshops than I had dared to imagine, I also pass a tobacconist’s, a men and women’s clothing store and Lárus G. Lúdvíksson’s shoe shop. To shake off the cars I turn up Skólavördustígur.
There’s Mokka, the café where all the Reykjavík poets hang out, known back home as those smartarse losers who live down south and lounge about in public places drinking coffee all day. I linger a moment outside the window, case in hand, and peer into the thick smoke; the interior is dark and I can’t make out any of the poets’ faces.
Kjartansgata
The doorbell is labelled Lýdur and Ísey and below this is a bell out of order sign. A pram is parked beside the basement door. The fence has fallen into disrepair and in front of the house is a patch of unkempt grass.
I knock. Ísey, my childhood friend, opens the door and smiles from ear to ear. She is wearing a green skirt, and her hair is cut short and held back by a headband.
She embraces me and drags me inside.
“I’ve been looking forward to you coming to town all summer,” she says.
A baby sits on a rug on the floor, banging two wooden blocks together.
She whisks her daughter off the mat and rushes over to me with her. The girl isn’t happy to let go of the blocks. Ísey pulls the dummy out of her mouth, kisses her wet cheek and introduces us. A trail of saliva dangles from the dummy.
“Let me introduce you to Thorgerdur,” she says. “Thorgerdur, this is Hekla, my best friend.”
She hands me the child. She’s the spitting image of her father.
The baby wriggles in my arms and blows a raspberry at me.
My friend takes the child back and places her on the floor, and then embraces me again and wants to show me around the flat.
“I’m so happy to see you, Hekla. Tell me what you’re reading. I’ve no time to read. I’ve such a longing for it. I’m lucky if I manage to read two poems before I fall asleep. I have a card for the library in Thingholtsstræti, but I’ve got no one to babysit for me while I fetch the books.”
The child has lost interest in the blocks and wiggles off the rug. She tries to hoist herself to her feet by grabbing onto a lamp stand, which wobbles. Her mother grabs her and sticks the dummy back into her mouth. She spits it straight out again.
“It’s so much work being with a small child, Hekla. We’re together all week, all day long and also at night when Lýdur is away doing road work in the east. I didn’t know it would be so wonderful to be a mother. Having a baby has been the best experience of my life. I’m so happy. There’s nothing missing in my life. Your letters have kept me alive. I’m so lonely. Sometimes I feel like I’m a terrible mother. Then my mind is elsewhere when Thorgerdur is trying to attract my attention. I’m so scared of something happening to her. You can never let a child out of your sight. Not even when I’m folding nappies. She might stick something into her mouth. The best time of the day is when Thorgerdur is asleep in her pram in the morning and I make some coffee and read Tíminn. I read my coffee grounds every day. There are no deaths. I look forward to when Thorgerdur will be a teenager and we can discuss books together. Like you and I used to do. That’s another twelve years away. Thorgerdur’s had a cold and is peevish and sleeps with me, but when Lýdur comes home at the weekends, he wants her to sleep in her own bed. We slip on an Ellý Vilhjálms record and dance. He’s thinking of quitting his job at the Road Administration. We’re saving up to buy a small patch of land in Sogamýri. Lýdur wants a garage to start his own upholstering or framing company. He says you can also make a packet stuffing birds. Unless he gets a job at the cement factory, then we’ll move to Akranes. A new family moved into the basement next door last month. Lýdur lent a hand and helped carry a dresser. They didn’t have much furniture. I just caught a glimpse of her. I think she’s about our age and she has four kids. The youngest is around the same age as my Thorgerdur. It’s been five weeks since they moved in and there aren’t any curtains in the living room yet. When I got up last night and drank a glass of milk at the kitchen window and I looked out into the darkness, I noticed that the woman was also standing by her kitchen window and looking into the darkness too. I felt she looked really glum. I saw myself reflected in the window and the woman was also reflected in her window, two sleepless women, and for a moment our mirrored images fused and I felt as if she were standing in my kitchen and I in hers, can you imagine anything so silly? The only man I talk to during the day is the fishmonger. There are two of them as it happens. Twins and they work in shifts. I only realized it yesterday when they were in the store at the same time and stood side by side. It was difficult to tell them apart. Then I understood why the fishmonger sometimes jokes with me and calls me his darling and sometimes not; it’s because it’s not the same guy. They wrap the fish in newspaper, Morgunbladid. Let me have a poem or a short story, I say to the guy who’s serving me, no obituaries or death notices. When I got home yesterday, I carefully unwrapped the haddock in the sink, the innermost sheet was soaking and difficult to read but on the next page, there were two poems by a poet who sits in Café Mokka all day long. Sorry if I blab too much. Are you going to go to Mokka and Laugavegur 11 to sit with the poets? I’ve walked past there with the pram and seen them hunched over their coffee cups, lacing them with liquid that comes out of brown paper bags. The waitresses turn a blind eye to it. What would happen if I strolled into the cloud of smoke with Thorgerdur in my arms and ordered a cup of coffee? Or walked into an abstract art exhibition in Bogasalur with the pram?”
“You could give it a try.”
She shakes her head.
“You wear trousers and go your own way, Hekla.”
The child is tired and rests her head on my friend’s shoulder as she paces the floor with her a few times. Then she says she’s going to put her daughter to sleep while I have a look around.
That’s quickly done.
There is very little furniture in the small living room: a green plush sofa and a sideboard against the wall with a crocheted tablecloth and three photographs in gilded frames: a wedding shot of Ísey with a beehive hairdo, a picture of a baby and finally, one of me and Ísey. I bend over to examine it. We stand smiling by a stone sheepfold, I in bib overalls, wool sweater and my brother Örn’s waders, which are three sizes too big for me, having just chased after two ewes all day in the canyon. Ísey hadn’t joined in the search, but helped the women to butter rye pancakes, fry crullers and heat cocoa in a thirty-litre pot in the catering tent. She’s got brown curls, is wearing a skirt and a buttoned cardigan and is leaning her head on my shoulder. Who took that picture, was it Jón John?
After a short while, my friend returns with a hint of sleep in her eyes and quietly leans on the door behind her. I think I heard her singing the same ancient lullaby that a mother sang to her child before throwing it into a waterfall. Once more she tells me how glad she is to see me and sidles up beside me at the sideboard to scrutinize the photograph of us as if she were wondering who those girls are. The picture is two years old.
“I made that skirt myself from a picture in the paper,” she finally says. “She ponders a moment. Jón John helped me with the pattern,” she adds. Then she does the same